TELL ME YOUR WORST EASTER EVER

Happy to, Jenny! You know I love to bitch! Ok, in my 1980s Catholic childhood, Easter meant a new dress from JC Penney (a.k.a. “Penney’s” if you were my mom), acrylic tights that collected more heat in the crotch than a very efficient solar panel, and white patent leather Mary Janes. It also meant the longest church service of the year— probably two hours at our usual, Saint Cyril’s, but even longer if we went to my grandma’s Community of Christ church, a stone pile out in rural Illinois where the hymns were different and the congregants were kind ancients. I liked local Mass better because they’d fill the Polish cathedral with white lilies, swing an incense bell up and down the aisle, and the altar boys even switched out their usual black and white cassocks for special gray robes, although I can’t think about those without remembering my classmate who was buried in his.